In short. MicrosoftPreview generates page snapshots for Microsoft products and identifies its desktop and mobile variants with MicrosoftPreview/2.0.

Definition: As of October 2026, Microsoft's Bing crawler documentation describes MicrosoftPreview as a crawler that generates page snapshots for Microsoft products. It has desktop and mobile variants.

Key facts

Microsoft's crawler overview lists MicrosoftPreview/2.0 in both published user-agent strings.
The same overview assigns MicrosoftPreview the role of creating snapshots for Microsoft products and assigns BingPreview snapshots for Bing.
The overview warns that crawler user-agent strings can be falsified and directs website owners to the Verify Bingbot tool to check an originating IP address.

What does preview fetching cover?

A page snapshot is the output Microsoft names for MicrosoftPreview in its crawler overview. The table lists MicrosoftPreview separately from Bingbot, which Microsoft describes as its standard crawler handling most daily crawling, and from BingVideoPreview, which provides video previews in Bing.

These role descriptions provide a basis for classifying requests in website logs: MicrosoftPreview belongs under page preview fetching. BingPreview has a related purpose, with Bing as its stated destination. The documentation does not name the Microsoft products that display MicrosoftPreview snapshots or specify a fetching frequency.

How does MicrosoftPreview identify itself?

A user-agent string is the identification text a crawler sends in an HTTP request. The Bing overview publishes this desktop example:

Mozilla/5.0 AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko; compatible; MicrosoftPreview/2.0; +https://aka.ms/MicrosoftPreview) Chrome/W.X.Y.Z Safari/537.36

The MicrosoftPreview name, version and documentation link appear inside a browser-style string. The published mobile example contains the same MicrosoftPreview identity alongside an Android device description. Searching logs for MicrosoftPreview/2.0 therefore covers both documented variants.

Microsoft's Verify Bingbot instructions describe an IP address check: enter the address in the tool and submit it for a verdict about whether it belongs to Bing. This is the verification route linked from the crawler overview's general authenticity guidance. A user-agent match alone remains a claim of identity because the header can be copied.

What controls does Microsoft document?

A robots.txt file contains crawler access rules. Microsoft's crawler overview gives general guidance that these files can tell Bing crawlers how to interact with a website.

The IETF's Robots Exclusion Protocol defines how crawlers select rules using a product token, their name for matching a User-agent group. The standard recommends that this token appear within the HTTP identification string. This separates a crawler's short matching name from its full browser-style header.

The same standard states that robots rules are requests to crawlers and are separate from access authorization. Content requiring restricted access therefore needs an authorization mechanism at the website itself.

FAQ

Which text should I look for in my logs?

The Bing crawler overview publishes MicrosoftPreview/2.0 in the desktop and mobile strings. You can use that text to find requests claiming this identity.

How can I check a request's origin?

Microsoft's Verify Bingbot help explains how to submit an originating IP address for verification. Use the address from your server logs when following the overview's authenticity guidance.

Sources

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